


For What It's Worth

by MomentumDeferred



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Body identification, Post Season 2, homeless matt, no happy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-28
Updated: 2016-03-28
Packaged: 2018-05-29 17:39:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6385903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MomentumDeferred/pseuds/MomentumDeferred
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The doctor slides the first picture over, face-down.  He tells Foggy to take his time.</p><p>Foggy blinks and flips it over immediately.</p><p>It's him.  Of course it's him.</p><p>(Written for a prompt.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	For What It's Worth

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [this prompt](http://daredevilkink.dreamwidth.org/7552.html?thread=14420096#cmt14420096) on the Kinkmeme:
> 
> >After maybe a year, Foggy gets a call from the police saying there's a dead homeless man they've found with Foggy's number in his pocket, can he please come and identify the guy. It's Matt.

The call came in at 2:09 p.m. on a Wednesday, as he was hurrying back to his office after a late lunch-- he even took the stairs, because he was trying to be better, trying to take care of himself. It was strange, he thought, as he pulled the phone from his pocket, because the call came in on his personal number, not forwarded from his office. He hovered on the third floor landing as he swiped the screen and answered.

"Franklin Nelson." Because he was professional, damnit, and Hogarth preferred he not answer with his usual blaring 'Foggy' if it was a possible client waiting on the other line.

"Hello." It's a middle-aged woman. Falsely polite. Being a lawyer, he's heard a lot of them. "My name's Brenda Michaels, calling from the New York medical examiner's office. Have you got a minute?"

"Yeah, sure." He forgets her name immediately as the words  _medical examiner's office_ echoes in his head, and rubs his thumb on the underside of his phone as he leans against the wall. Okay, he was using the stairs, but not that often. He could do better, and he knows it. "Is this about a case?"

"I... don't believe so. I'm calling in reference to a John Doe recovered last night. There was no identification, but this number was being carried by the deceased."

 _Deceased_. The word jolts coldly through his body. A corpse. She was talking about a corpse. He works his jaw for a second, his tongue uncharacteristically stilled by the words he couldn't quite force out. _John Doe. Deceased_.

"We'd like you to come down to our office, maybe look at a few pictures, help with identification?" She tacks a questioning lilt to the last of her words, like she was a neighbor asking to borrow a cup of sugar and not a medical professional asking him to drive down to a hospital and look at a dead body.

Finally, he's able to get a word out. Two words. Three. "Yeah. Where at?"

\---

It's a thirty-minute drive because he gets caught in traffic halfway there. Luckily, he's able to worm out from underneath two meetings with the old 'Whoops, sorry, gotta check out an unidentified body, can we pencil this in for next week maybe' excuse. The cab smells like imitation apples and the sodden, wet scent of a rain-soaked city. He remembered, out where his parents lived, that when it rained, it smelled fresh. Not in New York. The water mixes itself in with the trash and the cars and the people and turns it into something heady, something that clings to brick walls and balustrades and never lets go.

Foggy doesn't think about it. He can't think about it. There's just no way. No way at all.

And wouldn't that be just like that fucking asshole, one last parting shot, a nice firm Murdock _'Fuck you for letting go, because I couldn't. I couldn't.'_

He pays the cabbie and hurries to the building before the rain creeps up his slacks. The office smells like wet newspaper, but it's well-kept. A receptionist has him fill out paperwork. Family ties, occupation, phone number. The usual bullshit.

He sits in the lobby idly surfing Reddit, never really reading the words, until he's called back by a courteous middle-aged woman in a pair of red scrubs. Foggy blinks at the color of them as she has him sit in a clean, emotionless room with a scuffed wooden table.

A man comes in. He looks like he could be a doctor. A coroner. Mortician. He speaks in a calm, soothing voice and carries a manila envelope. It's full of photographs. Pictures of the deceased, Foggy is told. There's no blood, Foggy is told. This is a dead body and nothing else, Foggy is told.

The doctor slides the first picture over, face-down. He tells Foggy to take his time.

Foggy blinks and flips it over immediately.

It's him. Of course it's him. Eyes as dead as they ever were. Overgrown hair, a dark splash against a pale forehead. A beard and a black eye and a few new scars. He looks calmer than he ever had when he was alive. Peaceful.

Foggy isn't sure why, but it feels so fucking unfair.

The doctor leans in and explains in precise, clear-cut terms. How a call came in for a dead body in an alley. How the transients described that they'd seen the deceased around, that he was familiar with the area. Homeless. How he carried a cane, wore a pair of black sunglasses held together with masking tape.

How he slept behind a dumpster in an alley connected to a coffee shop. Foggy knows the shop. He goes there a few times a week. Best biscotti in Manhattan.

"Do you know this man?" the doctor asks, voice soft and gentle and emotionless.

Foggy feels himself reply but he can't feel the words leaving his mouth.

"Yes."

"His name?"

"Matthew Murdock."

It feels like he's vomited the name out, spread it over the scuffed table and the awful photograph and sealed it in time, forever. He doesn't think anything else could ever hurt so badly. A wound that he didn't know he still had, ripped back open, bared to the sun so the dying light could dance and burn in its hollows, and it hurts. It hurts. It hurts.

"Can you give me any more information on him, Mr. Nelson?"

Yes. He can. He's the only one who can. Everything he knows rushes in, clamors in his brain; he can't pick out anything specific. He swallows, feels his throat close, open, close, open.

Foggy asks, "How did he die?"

The doctor is still speaking in that clinical tone, like he wasn't describing a body at all. "It looks like an upper respiratory infection. Respiratory depression. Untreated. And this weather, it's... it wouldn't have been beneficial to something of that nature."

Foggy feels the scoff leave his throat. Bewildered. Lost.

Matt died of a cold. He died of a fucking cold. He died of a fucking cold, alone, homeless, destitute, _alone_.

Alone.

The doctor offers to let him see Matt. He refuses because he doesn't want to remember Matt like that, all white skin in a wasted body, but it still feels like he's cheating. The doctor makes him fill out more forms. Last rites. Burial fees.

He had no idea that coffins were so fucking expensive. Foggy cuts a check right then and there, the entire amount. The worker in the red scrubs gives him an awkward, too-short hug.

Foggy goes home. He doesn't call the law office to tell them he won't be back in. He climbs the stairs to his upscale midtown studio apartment, stares sightlessly out the window at the Manhattan skyline, then throws a chair at the wall, knocks down his bookshelves, lays waste to the apartment until he collapses, screaming. He screams until he can't breathe, and then does it again. He screams until all he has are soft, worthless noises in his mouth.

He's asked to write an obituary. He does. It's simple and hollow and Matt deserved better. He'd always deserved better.

Karen calls him before the obituary is even published, because she works for the paper. Early edition. Also unfair. He wouldn't have wanted her to find out like that. Skimming the articles and seeing a familiar name. Someone she used to date, work for, _love_ , for Christ's sake.

Her voice is a faint and broken little thing. He has to turn his phone's volume up in order to hear her. She has a frail start, "So, um, did you," and she pushes out a breath that pours a death rattle over the mobile connection. "Did you hear about..."

"Yeah." There's no strength to be found in his words. Not even Matt would be able to hear it. "I wrote the obituary." It's awful, he thinks, that she called him believing he hadn't known yet. That she thought she'd be the one breaking the news. He thinks he can hear her relief, mingling with something small and shattered and buried so deep it might as well join Matt when he goes under the earth in a few days.

"We should have..." she starts, and never finishes. Foggy knows what she wanted to say, because he wants to say it too, but he never will. "Um," she lets out a breath and tries to start over, but it's too late for that; it has been for months now.

So Foggy talks instead. "Are you going to the funeral?"

"Um-- yeah. Yeah. Tomorrow?"

"Thursday. Four o'clock."

He imagines he can hear her hair brushing against her shoulders as she nods into the phone. "Yeah. Where is it?"

"I'll text you the address."

"Okay. Yeah. Thanks, Foggy."

He doesn't say anything else, just drops the phone from his ear and ends the call, watching the picture of her fade from existence. It's been a long time since he saw the photo. A long time since he'd seen her. He'd thought keeping up ties would be easier, but they'd lost touch, like people always do. It should hurt more than it does.

Foggy taps out the address, texts it to her number, then suppresses the urge to throw his phone out of the window and down to the filthy city streets below.

\---

Only three people show up to Matt's funeral. It's Foggy and Karen and Matt's priest. The priest speaks softly; his eyes swim. Foggy stares at the casket, knows his friend is in there, trapped, locked away. Jack Murdock's grave is right next to Matt's. Foggy knows he's never going to see Matt again, and God, he can't even remember the last time he'd seen Matt alive. He can't bring up the mental image of Matt's face without the photo of Matt's empty corpse superimposed over it.

Karen stands a few feet away. She doesn't talk, doesn't touch Foggy's arm or even bring him into a hug after the priest is done and the rain-streaked coffin is being lowered into the ground. Her eyes are bright and blue and as piercing as they'd always been. She's cut her hair and it bundles itself up around her face like shorn gold.

When it's over, she drops something into the grave, something written on a folded piece of white paper, and then the dirt is being filled in, and it's gone, lost to the loam and all the broken and abandoned things that lay within it. She blows out a breath and walks away.

Foggy stares at the hole in the ground and wonders how to fill the one within himself.

\---

Karen texts him four days later. She's probably drunk. It's late, and he should be sleeping. He hasn't slept much since the phone call in the stairwell. The rain's drumming against the windows, the lights of the city casting a million uneven shadows over his still-ruined apartment.

 _(02:14)_  
_we should have ehlped him foggy_

 _(02:15)_  
_I know._

 _(02:15)_  
_i didn't know eh was homeless fogg_

 _(02:16)_  
_Me either._

 _(02:16)_  
_is this our fault_

 _(02:17)_  
_foggy is this our fault_

 _(02:19)_  
_foggy please respond_

 _(02:25)_  
_it's our fault we should have done something we should have helped him_

 _(03:48)_  
_fuck you foggy_

He turns his phone off and goes to bed.

\---

Matt's been in the ground a week and Foggy can't remember the last time he ate. The firm calls his apartment's land-line over and over, leaves voicemail after voicemail until the mailbox is full and all they can do is hang up and try again. He misses all of his appointments and court dates and hates himself for it, but can't bring himself to walk to his apartment door and fucking leave.

The land-line rings and rings and rings and fucking rings, but he doesn't pick up. He wonders how long it will take before they send the police over for a welfare check. He wonders if he deserves it.

His mobile's been dead for days. It sits on the floor, reflecting the muddled image of the city through the window. He stares at it blankly and tries to remember what Matt looked like when he was alive. All he sees is the photograph.

The phone rings and rings and rings and rings. He rips it out of the wall and snaps the receiver in half. It's the most movement he's done in five days, and afterward, he lays down on his couch and sleeps for twelve hours.

Nobody comes to check on him, and isn't that just something he fucking deserves?

\---

He heals. It takes time, God, does it take time, but every day it hurts just a little less and a little less until he's forty-five and realizes that he hasn't thought of Matt in years.

\---

At the end of it all, it's a stupid, strung-out teenage mugger that steps out of an alley and ends Foggy's life. He's less than a block from Matt's old apartment. There's the sound of footsteps, rapid, to his right, and he turns in time to feel a knife slide home between his ribs, digging into the only place where Matt still existed, pouring him out red and black so that he could puddle on the concrete. Drug-addled hands rifle through Foggy's pockets. There is no-one to help him, and oh, it hurts. The knife. It's like fire funneling into his chest, burning his heart to ashes. But he's hurt worse.

He goes down; someone's screaming. He doesn't know who it is. The city stands tall above him, its gaze to the heavens, all its towers and lights reaching up and up and up. Brick and balustrades and filthy rain and Karen and Matt and Matt, Matt, Matt.

"I'm sorry," he wants to say, to finally apologize, but there's blood in his mouth that he can't speak around. "I'm sorry."

His ears are filled with sirens and shouting. His head buzzes. Something touches his neck. It all falls away to nothing, and he is so glad for it, he leaps into it without hesitation and wants to shudder in relief but his body isn't working anymore, he can't breathe or think and he's-- he's scared, he's so _scared_ \--

\---

Karen writes the obituary and cries hysterically at the funeral at all the people who'd come, all the people that loved him. There are so many. The next day, she puts in her two weeks notice and moves back to Vermont. The scent of the city curls under her skin and adheres under her fingernails; it follows her like a shadow and she'll never be free of it again.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm a depressed sack of shit and wrote a rude prompt fill because I might as well do something constructive with it


End file.
